Joe Chenelly

Joseph Randy "Joe" Chenelly (born October 2, 1976) is an American journalist and political adviser. He is now directing the "Warriors for Webb" grassroots movement of the Jim Webb campaign for U.S. president. He is also assistant national director of communications for Disabled American Veterans.

Chenelly covers military and veterans matters, on staff with the Military Times newspapers and Gannet News, reporting on operations in the Middle East, Southwest Asia, Africa, as well as disaster relief in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Chenelly was named one of the 100 "most influential journalists covering armed violence". He was the first U.S. Marine combat correspondent to step into enemy territory after September 11, 2001, documenting American military action and providing it for broadcast throughout the international media.

Chenelly was the first military reporter in Pakistan and Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks in the United States. He also reported from the frontlines with American and allied forces in Kuwait and Iraq as that war began in 2003. Chenelly was on the ground for the start of both Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. After returning to Washington to cover the wars from the policy aspect, he headed back to field reporting, corresponding live from the Louisiana Superdome and flooded streets of New Orleans as a civilian reporter in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As part of the first conventional U.S. ground force to enter Afghanistan, he was the first to provide combat footage of Operation Enduring Freedom,[2] the first to report from inside a coalition detention facility in Afghanistan[2], the first to report an Iraqi man had given American forces information about where U.S. Army prisoner of war Pfc. Jessica Lynch was being held, the first to report that the other American prisoners of war had been rescued, and he was the first to report FEMA and the National Guard had pulled out of the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Chenelly is now assistant national director of communications for the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) in Washington, D.C. On November 6, 2012, he was elected to a four-year term on the Calvert County Board of Education (District 1). Chenelly was named Calvert County (MD) Man of the Year by the county's Republican Central Committee in May 2013.